 Hello, everyone. I really hope everybody can hear me all right. It's always a little point of worry when hosting these virtual events. I got confirmation from my team that it seems to work all right. Well, welcome everybody to our event today on interoperability in the DMA and DSA. Since it's only one hour, I wanna make sure that we get as much information from the speakers as possible. But on behalf of Openform Europe, I wanna welcome you all to this session. So without further ado, I'll welcome the moderator, Samuel Stalton, on stage. And it seems to work. Thank you very much, Esther. Thanks so much for your welcome there. And good afternoon and welcome to all of our attendees tuning in from all over the world today for this virtual event entitled Interoperability in the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act brought to you as Astor said there by the Openform Europe, an independent think tank which supports openness in computing and in the digital world. My name is Samuel Stalton and I'm the Digital Editor at your Active and I'll be moderating today's session. So how can the European Commission's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act proposals now being debated of course by the Parliament and Council do more to stimulate competition and to get a better deal for users of digital services like social media, instant messaging and search? How can the package make it easier for European tech startups to compete fairly in these markets, give European consumers a better choice of services and better protect fundamental rights such as privacy? Well, these are some of the questions that we will seek to probe today as part of our panel discussion on the topic of interoperability across the two files. For this course, we are very pleased indeed to be joined by an expert panel this afternoon. We have with us here today Issa Stasi, Senior Legal Officer at Wright's Group Article 19. We're also joined by Ian Brown, Independent Researcher. We've also got Amandine Lapap, co-founder of the Messaging Technology Element and also co-founder of the matrix.org foundation and Open Source Initiative and we're very pleased to be joined by Augustine Rainer, Director for Legal and Economic Affairs at the European Consumer Organization, Burke. As always, you can get involved with today's conversation by posing your own questions to the panel using the chat functionality on the platform and we shall pick them up as they come through throughout the session. And just to remind you that this event is being recorded. So we've got an hour to go. So without further ado, I think it's just about time to jump straight in to our discussion today. And I think it's, it would be remiss of us perhaps not to start at the very beginning of the debate around interoperability in the DMA. And perhaps I could turn to Ian Brown for the first question on this one. And we're really focusing here on Article 61F of the DMA which stipulates that gatekeepers should only provide interoperability to business users for ancillary services and not core services. And of course, before the official presentation of the text on December the 15th, there were rumors that this provision would be broader and earlier drafts actually seem to signify that as well. So why are the change in approach from the commission here from core to ancillary services? And what exactly happened in terms of the commission's change in approach within that period of time? Ian. I think this is a really key point. I think the proposal that we have from the commission and the article 61F that you mentioned is a good starting point. We all know that as Mark Andreessen said a decade ago, software is eating the world. All kinds of industry sectors are being digitized. And I think 61F does a good job as it is in making sure that the big gatekeepers of today don't just take over all these other industry sectors as well. So Europe is very strong in automobiles, for example. And I think without this kind of regulatory provision, you could well imagine today's big gatekeepers in tech being the big automobile manufacturers of the next decade. But I think it is a key omission as you said that this form of text in the final proposal doesn't cover social media services, instant messaging in particular, the core services themselves. The draft that was leaked in September went much further. I was just reminding myself exactly what it said. And it has a provision that's quite like the final text, but it has three other provisions that go further as well that would cover the core services. I don't know why that happened. I can only imagine there was a lot of lobbying going on between September and December. Right, so we've got those three elements of the black list, white list, gray list, whichever one that it was that seemed to just disappear from the final text there. That's right. Those color lists turned into Article 5, the self-executing responsibilities in Article 6, the responsibilities that can be further specified by the Commission. I think interoperability would always be in the second because there are some important small details that I think you couldn't put on the face of the act. But yes, we've got this quite narrow provision now that only covers ancillary services and only covers business users. And I think, and many other people think, it should also cover core services, especially social media and interoperability. And it should be a right for end users as well as business users. Okay, thanks Ian. So we've got this business users and ancillary situation here now, Issa Stasi at Article 19. There has been the argument, at least from what I've heard in Brussels, that a broader approach for interoperability could actually hamper and harm innovation. What's your response to this? Well, there've been also discussions and rumors about exactly the opposite. So I tend to believe that this is a very, very nice debate that has got, and it's not been brought by the DMA. It was actually there years ago already. Our approach is to take it from the user perspective. So from the end user perspective. From the end user perspective, interoperability is definitely a key tool. A key tool that I mean, that delivers a lot of outcome, positive outcomes for end users. And of course, it also creates some challenges. But the majority of remedies, they do as well. So it's a matter of how you shape it and by that, I mean also taking into account of the principle of proportionality worshiping the interoperability remedy. The good part of it is that we don't need to start from scratch, interoperability is already present in the European Union regulatory frameworks. It is in the European Electronic Communication Code. It has been a single doubt by competition authorities in the past as well. So it's not nothing absolutely new we cannot play with and we are scared about. So those challenges, I believe they're absolutely, it's absolutely impossible to overtake them or to shape interoperability in the specific use cases in a way that it doesn't create troubles. Now, why it's, it does, why the idea that it's a tool for end users and it's a tool to foster innovation or complementary? Why those are extremely linked? Because for end users, interoperability means real choice, means possibility to take back some control and decides, you know, have easier possibility for switching, have also different real alternatives to look at. Now, if end users in principle, in principle free to do so, they of course create a lot of space for demand for new products, alternative products, innovative products. So from start-uppers or from alternative players, there is a space they can enter to and fill with innovative products. So that's why I think we're talking about the two sides of the same coin in a way. So yes, but as I mentioned, and as I said, we're strongly convinced that interoperability is a tool to an end. So we need, you know, those ends could be user empowerment and innovation. I'm strongly convinced they go end to end. That's why I think that both the DMA and the DSA should pay particular attention to that. Mm-hmm, okay, I'm sorry. Perhaps we can get onto the DSA in a bit more detail later on, but just honing in now on this point about innovation. Of course, the pro-interoperability crowds say that actually innovation would be increased with a more bolstered interoperability provision within the text, but those perhaps against that idea say that interoperability is bad for innovation. So perhaps you could frame this debate here around innovation and maybe cut through some of the confusion and clarify for us whether actually it would be good or bad for innovation or if it's not so black and white at the moment. I think it's a, as a matter of fact, it is not black and white, as you said, it's a spectrum of possibilities. It's also a spectrum of different interoperability provisions that we can advocate for that we might think are gonna fit for purpose. I mentioned at the beginning the issue with proportionality and I'm strongly convinced that it really depends on the specific use cases. Now, the main point is that the DMA is supposed to create contestability in the market to be used for that and fairness, right? Now, contestability in the market in the medium and long-term at least, it's very much not possible without innovation. So if you trigger one, you're basically stimulating the other as well, or at least this is what's traditional we have thought and that's why we have always relied on competition as we have innovative markets as well. So once again, we are talking about factors that strongly interplay to each other. And the idea that I've heard a lot of people discussing coming with the idea that in this scenario, we have now with gatekeepers, gatekeepers are big platform. They bring network effects and they bring also some efficiencies related to issues such as scale. Now for end users, scale might bring some advantages as well and for business users too. So the point is from that perspective, they used to be, the arguments used to be, if we try to stimulate competition among platforms, where we're gonna end up, we're gonna lose also some efficiencies, we're gonna lose some positive effects of scale and concentration, et cetera. I think to get back to your initial point, this is this argument is presented as a dichotomy and I don't think it is. I think we need to work on the nuances. I think we need to be a little bit more ambitious. I think we need more debate about how many platforms, we need what's the maximum number of platforms that we need in order not to kill innovation or in order not to lose the advantages of concentration in a way. All this seems to be absent and of course, a stake there is the innovation we're gonna see in the next years to come. So that's why I think the baseline for this discussion should be, as I said, it should be a little bit more diverse and complex taking into account the different nuances more than just providing a yes or no answer. Yeah. Thanks, Iza there. Augustine Reiner now from Buick. By extension, therefore, if we're talking about interoperability, being able to foster innovation and to the benefit of end users, how could this make Europe's digital economy more competitive generally? In what ways could more and more of a robust interoperability provision help make these markets more competitive? And on the other side of the coin, if core services go untouched, then to how much of an extent will market dominance become more entrenched than it currently is? Thank you, Samuel. Thank you also to OFE for organizing this discussion. I think it's very good that we are able to discuss now that the DMA have been already published. There are several actually questions in your question, Samuel, perhaps to take a step back. We should indeed start by giving some merit to the commission. For the matter of fact of having this proposal, I think that the proposal in itself having the proposal is an achievement in itself. Don't forget that the commission has the right to initiate legislation. So I think that to a certain extent, we need to acknowledge that as well. However, when it comes to interoperability, as I said already, quite timid. And we cannot forget that we are talking about a regulation that applies to certain players, particularly the gatekeepers, once they have been identified according to the thresholds that are set in the regulations. So this is not for every single company. And we are talking about in the particular case of interoperability regarding core services that have been already well identified as presenting market failures for users. The simple fact that I think everybody had experience that you cannot text to a competing communication app represent a market failure that has also effects on how these markets developed. And in that regard, we have seen and witnesses over the years and increasing degree of concentration in these markets due to the lack of measures as a way to stimulate a competition being one of them interoperability. So to answer to your first part of your question, I think this indeed can reposition Europe kind of in a global competitive landscape in the sense of not only being a regulatory power, but also being able actually to set the condition for startups in Europe and also Europe, anybody that wants to make business here to be able to enjoy the benefits and ease these rules get through as we expect them to do, including interoperability for core services such as communication app and social media that these companies as we see an opportunity here to do business and to reach out to customers beyond their niche markets where they're currently operating. Okay, and I mean, in terms of giving the commission their views for presenting this, but as Ian highlighted earlier on, I mean, we saw earlier drafts that suggested that the commission had a lot more confidence than they ended up with at the end. So in the very before the December the 15th presentation to make the commission take such a big step back. Wait, I'm the only one that lose, lost someone? Do you hear me? Yeah, no, I hear you. You hear me? Okay, so I'd like to go back to Ian's earlier point about the blacklist drafts that were released by the commission. Of course, we give the commission their dues for coming out with the DMA on December the 15th as usual, but there was such a big step back in terms of the interoperability provisions in the final text. So I mean, in your opinion, what exactly went on there and how can the commission justify not applying interoperability more broadly here? Well, I can really comment on what's going on in the kitchen of the commission, they should know better. The reality is the proposal, it is where it is and we have to work on this basis. I think personally, I think that when it comes to the core services that we are discussing, so communication apps or communication services and social media, I think that it has been established the need to have interoperability in these markets in order to increase the contestability of these markets, allow new entrants, provide more choice to consumers, innovation, everything that was have been said before. No idea the commission had been subject to lobbying, to kind of reduce the scope, which is something that they can answer and they're in a better place to answer that. But I do think that if we see, for example, the position of the European Parliament in a digital services act at the time resolution, which also covers the DMA as well as serial conclusion of the council, I think that the decision maker, the co-decision makers will be eventually supportive of this idea, of course. We are going to see a lot of lobbying coming from those that are primarily concerned about these new rules, lobbying that they will deploy not only by themselves, but also through the multiple trade organization, aka paid academics, think tank, so on and so forth. So we're going to see the decision maker being bombarded. And of course, trying to build a case for against interoperability because this will go into damage, privacy, security, this is going to be in that being bad for consumers. What I can tell you is that based on the experience that we have had in the past in other markets regarding mandate interoperability, we are going any further payment services. The experience is quite positive. And I think that we should build on past experiences and knowing that here what we're trying to do is to open the markets for new entrants, for to have more innovation, more choice. And we cannot forget that these rules are applying to those companies that have the technical capability, that have the resources that are well placed to deploy the necessary protocols in order to enable interoperability. So this is not about creating costs that are going to be passed on to consumers. Those smaller companies, and Amading can speak better about that, they have the choice if they want to interoperate with the gatekeepers. But the starting point is to make those gatekeepers interoperate, create the obligations so others are able, if they wish to do so, to interoperate with the gatekeepers core services. So I think we should not forget or lose sight of what really what we are regulating and who are we regulating here. Okay, thanks Agustin. And I think now's a good time to bring in Amading as a representative from Europe's SME ecosystem here. And Amading, your instant messaging company, Element, employs the matrix protocol and offers communications across services, including Slack, Telegram, Jitsi, Meet, et cetera. For you, in what practical ways would stronger interoperability provisions in the DMA help the development of your own services in the future? Perhaps you could give us a few practical examples. Sure, thank you. So yeah, I think, Leem, I have two hats here. One is the fact I'm one of the co-founder of the matrix protocol. So we created matrix to precisely solve that. So we're just crazy. We cannot talk between applications. Why can we send SMS from one provider to another? Why can we send email from one provider to another? How can I access my email from my iPhone, email phone as well as app, as well as a browser, but not for chat. So we created matrix precisely to solve this. So when we saw that the regulation was actually going into that direction, we felt like, okay, that's good. The world is converging. People have understood that we need this. We need this to open the market. We cannot keep our communication stuck into big silos and completely fragmented. So that's one side of it. Then on the other side, yes, we have Element as the startup who is indeed building on top of matrix. But if we were not building on top of this open protocol for real-time communication, then yes, we would be stuck. You would have to, as a small company who is trying to provide a very specific value with some social media or instant messaging, targeting maybe a specific use case, then you have to build your user base from scratch, which is almost close to impossible, basically. So having the EU going into the right direction and trying to mandate this interoperability definitely helps small companies building, bringing their own value because not everyone is after the same things. My grandmother doesn't need the same app to talk to me, then I need to talk to my colleagues as well or some, I don't know, some filmmakers maybe need a very specific chat app into their filmmaking applications so that they can communicate with the rest of the ecosystem or estate agents. Like there are so many use cases for social media, for instant messaging, for voice and video. Why are we every time forced to install one given app? So we really saw it as a light of hope in terms of acceleration. If they're not pushing the core services, then it just means we'll have to work harder. We have to make sure we get in touch with all these big giants that we're already talking to. But it's a lot of more legwork to make them understand that at some point they will have to open up. Where basically the way we're doing it on our side is copying what happens with email. Initially email had multiple protocols. Some day people got together, decided that SMTP was a good baseline and everyone converged towards SMTP except from Microsoft who refused to get exchange on SMTP. Until one day, well, everyone else were into this big open bubble of SMTP and they were stuck into their small silo of X400. And they had no choice. And that's basically what we're trying to do. And if we don't get help from the EU, it's going to take more time. It's going to be harder to eventually bring this interoperability to everyone. But hopefully one day we have the long tail of everyone jumping on the board of the big open network and then the big silos will realize that they're missing on the value here and they could be part of this big ecosystem too. And you can imagine in that scenario, for example, it would make our market places, at least in the digital economy, so much more competitive. Competitive because these businesses are really striving to improve their services for the same user base because we all have access to those different users in a fully interoperable world. So yeah, hopefully that would be the end result there. Just a reminder to all our attendees, please submit your questions through to us on the chat. I can see a few coming in at the moment. And I'd like to pick up on one here. And this is from someone called SV. And I'm so glad this question has come up actually because this is something that's been dogging my mind for a few months. I know Ian Brown's responded to it, but perhaps we can bring in Ian as well on this point after Issa and Agastin have commented on it. And SV asks, can someone give some examples on the distinction between ancillary and core services? I think here we're talking about definitions really. And the challenge of defining what actually is an ancillary service in respect to a core service because I imagine there's some ancillary services that rely fundamentally on the operation of core services and vice versa. So perhaps Issa, I could turn to you on this one first to address SV's question. Yes, thanks for this opportunity. Before I answer, I would like to also add a layer in this question to see whether, you know, the filling of also the other panelists and the people following us is the same. The DMA does contain a number of useful definitions, definitions of course. One is the core platform services. And it is, you know, they've been identified based on a number of factors, which I tend to agree with, but then they also contain the definition of business users services and ancillary services. And this is what I'm struggling to kind of really identify not only the differences between the two, which might be more nuanced that the difference between the core platform services and the ancillary services, but also why we really need this. So we do need this because it's mentioned in the article 61F, which, you know, as we know already as one of the target of our attention. And it's also mentioned in a couple of other lines in the article five and six, but I still wonder why we needed this subcategory, let's say, because I do attribute ancillary services, the value of a subcategory of business users services. Having said that, I think an easy example is to consider payment services as ancillary to the service you're paying for, or identification services as ancillary to the services you need access to, you need identification to have access to. So in a way, they complement the main service, but they're not necessary. We thinking that you might have possibilities to get the main service without necessarily going through those ancillary services. Now, it's a concept that has been, it comes, I guess it comes from the competition legacy. It has been used in a number of competition, soft law instruments guidelines by the commission, et cetera, to identify provisions in certain kinds of content contracts that had a little bit less, that created a little bit less worry with regards to the main decor service because of the structural value they had for what it uses. At the moment, this definition, it simply seems to give us the message that the commission is looking way more at inter-platform competition than, sorry, intra-platform competition than inter-platform competition. So this, I think the use of the ancillary services as a definition, as a concept, it kind of tend, yeah, it brings us in that direction. It gives that message, which as we said is a disparate message. Okay, thanks, Isa. I'd like to bring in Augustine Rainer on this point and then perhaps go back to Ian Brown for the question that's just coming on security and privacy bearing in mind Ian's background. So Augustine, just following on from Isa's point there about the difference between ancillary services and core services. What sort of a position do you adopt in this debate and would you support more of a prescriptive approach in terms of identifying beforehand the services that would come under that scope or where do you stand on this issue? I think for the purpose of the enforceability of this regulation, we need to define the services in the specific provisions of the regulation. Nothing prevents, of course, that the commission through the mechanism for seeing Article 10 could eventually extend it to other services. But I think that the services need to be mentioned. Now, regarding the distinction between core and ancillary services, for the purpose of interoperability, I don't really think that this distinction makes sense. You can just simply add a list of services that are subject to interoperability. And you will save a lot of time and headaches in trying to classify one or the other. I think that this distinction came from the fact that the commission didn't want to take too intrusive approach in the business models of these companies and therefore restricting only to ancillary services. But I don't think that we really need this definition if we list the services that we are talking about. And I think when it comes to services like interpersonal communication services using the Brussels jargon or communication apps to give it simple, as well as social media networks, that is very clear that here we have a market failure that could be addressed by means of these rules. So I don't see why should it too complicated just simply to name the services and maybe just include a couple of definitions of why we understand for one and the other. But I think that will be much more straightforward. Okay, and on that point, Agustin, does that make it perhaps less future-proof? I mean, of course, we have this provision in Article 10 that allows us to make certain revisions when necessary. But if we adopt a prescriptive approach of actually mentioning the services themselves in the text, does this lessen the ability of the DMA too to have the ability to step in when new services appear in the future? No, I don't think so. Different reasons, three reasons. First reason is, of course, through Article 10, depending on its final shape, the commission would be able to come into an implemented act to extend it, for example, to other services. But it remains to be seen how this article is going to look like at the end. Secondly, this could also be addressed by a more narrower review clause in which, for example, after a couple of years, two years or one year, the commission needs to make a report about whether other services should be included so on and so forth. And the third reason, and this is something that I have popped, for example, in the debate around the adoption of the GDPR. And the technique was particularly from the industry that was being regulated to say, you need something future proof, so let's keep it at principle level. But then try to enforce a principle. Almost impossible, almost impossible. If you don't have a norm actually making that principle operation and that you can enforce, now then you're going to just discuss before courts about how to deal with it. So for this type of regulation and concerning the companies that we are regulating here, an approach in which we should list the services is much more straightforward than having a principle-based mechanism even under the protection of no being future proof. But the reality is that if we need then to enforce a principle, we're going probably to spend much more time dealing with this rather than just revising the specific provisions of the regulation or through article 10 of the policy for the commission to include new services in the scope. Okay, thanks Agustin. I'd like now to turn to perhaps a different subject that we haven't covered so far in terms of those arguing against greater interoperability provisions in the DMA text. And that is from the perspective of security and privacy, which is another one of these arguments that has been floating around at least here the Brussels bubble for some time. And we have a question here from Claudia Pretner who is a legal policy advisor at Amnesty Tech. And Claudia asks, there are some voices that claim that interoperability could make communication less secure and could lead to further security breaches. What do you think of such claims? And the man to answer this question is of course, Ian Brown. You do hear this claim often and I think it's very poorly founded actually Agustin half answered this question already. Facebook as we know has already made its main messenger service and Instagram messenger interoperable. The nine largest UK banks have made their services interoperable. The telecoms industry across Europe have made their services interoperable for the last 25 years thanks to the European electronic communication code and its predecessors. So from a technical perspective, and I'm a computer scientist specializing in computer security, it is absolutely feasible to ask these big, very sophisticated gatekeeper platforms because that's who we're talking about regulating. We're not talking about regulating the three-person SME or the two-person open source software team. It will be entirely up to those organizations separately if they want to take advantage of interoperability mandates on the 12 to 20 at most perhaps very large gatekeeper companies that we are talking about. So I think it's always good to keep security in mind and often it's not kept in mind, but I think in this, the very particular kinds of regulation we're talking about, I really don't see it as an issue. Right, just to, yeah, I'm on Dean, I'll come back to you in a second, but Ian, these big tech platforms, they have the technical capacities at the current time to introduce interoperability, but they're making almost a political decision not to. I'm even more straightforwardly an economic decision, yes. Okay, thanks Ian, I'm on Dean, you wanted to jump in there. Yeah, I just wanted to jump on the fact that in fact interoperability can even give you more power to choose the most private platform because you have the choice of who you trust with your data basically. So it's very much taking it one step further, especially if we mandate end to an encryption, for example, for all these sorts of services. Absolutely, and perhaps on on Dean, we could stay with you for another question that's come through here from Astor actually, and Astor asks, it was mentioned that interoperability has been used to increase competition in the past. Could the panelists perhaps give some examples of this? Sure, so I think, so basically interoperability means you are building in an open ecosystem and you can see what open ecosystems do, look at the web and the size of the market, actually, I even had the number which I forgot, but like the market size of the world, the web is like a hundred of trillions of dollars. If you look at the market size of instant messaging, it's a hundred of billions, it's nothing. And that's what the lack of interoperability is triggering. It's completely hindering the market. And then you can look at the, as Ian was mentioned as an example, the telecom operators. It's been in the last 20 years, you've started to see the big, like in France for example, Orange was like the default, France Telecom was the state-run operator, and then they started opening up more and more. And you could start to see competition and price going down because you have to be the best, you have to provide the best value, you have to provide the best prices and to be the most relevant. By creating competition, you create innovation. Okay, thanks very much, I'm on Dean. I'm conscious of the fact we're rapidly running out of time actually, and we haven't spoken much about the DSA. So perhaps, Isar, I could turn to you for this one. In terms of the Digital Services Act itself, how much do you believe that the text could be improved to bolster these interoperability provisions? And what's your reading of the extent to which the DSA, as it stands, fosters interoperability? And would you suggest any particular changes to the text? Thank you. Very complex question, but it gives me the possibility to bring what I think could be a lens to which to look at the two pieces of legislation. So the DSA focuses on how certain services should be provided, right? The DMA, it's focusing on market dynamics and how we want our market to be shaped in the future. And I don't think it will be possible for any ambitious plan that takes into account different stakeholders' rights and obligations and it takes into account the benefit that could be created to keep those two conversations two separated. It is simply not possible for the way the markets are shaped now and those services are provided to look at how the service needs to be provided without regulating the markets where the players that provide those services are. So I'm strongly convinced that the more the interplays between these two tools are considered, the better the final texts will be. So interoperability as a tool, I tend to see this more at an instrument dealing with the way we want to see the markets in the future. So ideally, I think there will be more space for the DMA to push forward this. Having said that, we have already identified and spoken about the possibility to modulate interoperability depending on specific use cases. So now, if in a DSA that looks at specific services, we identify use cases where we think interoperability could add value or it could be a good instrument, then most probably we can think about having specific interoperability provisions in the DSA as well. An example I can come up with is article 29 of this DSA that talks about, well, that rules recommend the system. Now recommend the systems are very, very often, especially on social media platforms, they're all offered as a bundle together with the hosting service. But there are actually two different services. So article 29 that addresses only the very large online platforms, by the way. So we're not talking about gatekeepers, but yet we're talking about asymmetric regulations so only certain players that are bigger than others, of course. So that article, there's two things. The first one, it sets some transparency on how the recommender systems provide their service so that users and users, in this case, they will know more about this. It also kind of obliges those platforms to provide an option to provide the service without profiling the users. And it also kind of says that the platforms are obligated to provide an interface where people, users and users, they can select these options, the non-profiled options or all their options as they please. And this should be easy. It should be easy for the end users to choose. Now the way I see interoperability kicking in is if we think about opening the market for recommender systems, and if we think about the possibility for an end users of a platform that provides hosting and recommendation and recommender system to look outside the platform and pick a third party provider for the recommendation system, then what we would need there is essentially interoperability. We would need a very large online platform to provide to third party players the possibility to interoperate with the platform and provide a service to the end users. So there I see very well the possibility to add a line in the article that would explicitly provide for interoperability on that specific use case. Okay, thanks for that, Issa, for your suggestion there. I'd like to stay on the topic of data use actually because we've got quite an interesting question that's come in here from Carl Sykes. And Carl asks, I was wondering where the existing right to data portability in the GDPR sits within the new proposals for interoperability. How does interoperability encompass data portability? How does or could it go further? And perhaps Ian, you're nodding your head there. Would you like to address this one? Absolutely, and the GDPR article 20 gives Europeans the right to take their data from one service and move it to another service. And this certainly would help if it was enforced, it's not. But if it was more strongly enforced today, if I wanted to move from, let me just take one potential gatekeeper example, Facebook to a competitor social media service, I would have the right to do that. And actually Facebook and Google and some of the other big platforms provide very good tools, I mean they're legally required to, we shouldn't be too grateful but you are able to download your data from those platforms relatively easily. The problem from a competition perspective and why interoperability is so important is, okay, I've moved my social media profile from Facebook to a competitor or from WhatsApp to Elemental to Signal, but now I can't talk to my friends anymore. That's the whole point of a social media service and an instant messaging platform. So this is what interoperability does. Many people have argued for a stronger portability right instead of alongside a portability right. And actually the DMA proposal does include real-time portability requirements. So that's good, that takes portability forward, but it still doesn't solve the problem I just mentioned. So now I could have my Facebook account, I could also have another social media service account or I could have WhatsApp and another messaging account. I could use this real-time portability power to take my data all the time from those accounts, to have it connected if it was implemented properly. I would, but this is really critical in terms of competition driving quality and protecting values like privacy. I would need to maintain my accounts on those original services. So competition economists love talking about multi-homing and say that multi-homing can solve all these problems. What are you talking about? Everyone should just have a WhatsApp and Element and Signal and Blar accounts and everyone will be happy. The problem with that is I don't want to have to accept Facebook's terms and conditions to profile me wherever I go around the web and whatever I share with my friends in order to stay in touch with my family and friends. That's why I actually closed my own personal Facebook account five or six years ago. Unfortunately, I still find I have to maintain a WhatsApp account because a lot of my friends and family are there, including in groups. And I just can't communicate them with them because of the lack of interoperability without that account. So I think this is very abstractly. I think you can look at interoperability and portability as almost mirror images of each other. But speaking much more particularly about what's in the GDPR, what's in the proposed DMA, that's how I would draw the distinction. And Agastin, you were nodding your head there as well. I wonder if I could bring you in on this discussion when we're talking about the data portability provisions in the GDPR and the interoperability with regards to the DMA and the DSA. And there's also another question coming through from Faye Vandenboom who asks, the GDPR right does not allow intermediaries to do it for you or provide companies with this right. Does the DMA or the DSA overrule the GDPR in this sense? And perhaps how can these two work in tandem, portability and interoperability with one another? Thank you. It's a really interesting discussion to start from the beginning. Portability, it's a very good right, totally under enforced and it has its limitations in GDPR. So I think that there are also plans from the commission to do something in this regard in their upcoming data act. I think a lot can be done, but you're not going to solve the lack of interoperability with portability. Many of the services in which we have or we need interoperability does not imply do not require data portability. Think about open banking. For open banking, there is no portability of data per se. Now you have access to the appropriate application programming interfaces. So in this regard, I think I like what Ian says that two important elements, but one does not exclude the other, not at all. On the contrary, having portability should not be seen as an excuse to not have interoperability because they tackle completely different problems which are related. Sometimes, interoperability might imply also portability. So if you have interoperability between social media services in which you can pass your content that has been hosted from one to the other, okay, that might imply also a portability element. And then regarding how this interplays with the GDPR, I think it's an extremely interesting discussion. We cannot forget that both the DMA and the GDPR have different objectives. The objective of GDPR is to protect and implement the fundamental right to personal data. The objective of the DMA is increase market contestability. And of course, both needs to work together. And what is very interesting is that, of course, the DMA makes several references to the GDPR and making sure that no where choices are made, the GDPR is expected. But when we think, when we look at the portability right, it's extremely interesting to mention of the provision of continuous and real-time access which this is one of the limitations perhaps that the portability right the GDPR has or something to look more closely and I don't have the answer yet, but I think it's the worst starting is really what the DMA adds to what we have in the GDPR. And adds it only relates to the gatekeepers. So I think there's something to keep in mind also when we discuss eventually in the future the data act which might improve to a certain extent hopefully the limitations of the portability right of the GDPR, but not only for gatekeepers but in relation to any play actually processing personal data. Zinan, I feel actually a broader discussion about enforcement as well because the GDPR has set quite a worrying precedent in this field. And if it's anything like that in the DMA, then enforcement will be a challenge indeed. But perhaps that's a discussion for another time. We are rapidly running out of time actually looking at the clock now. Thank you for all your questions that are coming in thick and fast. Perhaps we can get back to a couple of those in writing but I would like now to turn back to our panelists for their short closing statements perhaps summarizing their main points that they've tried to highlight throughout this afternoon's panel. And to start with this, perhaps we could go to Omondine Lapap from Elements. Thank you. In summary, yeah, it's a great move that the Europe started. It's a bit sad that it's been shorter or there have been some stepbacks on what was originally the plan. We, from an industry perspective, we really believe that that's a future that's how we are going to manage to give the power back to the users in terms of who is hosting their data and the app they use to actually use their data. On our side, we're definitely working towards interoperability and promoting it as much as we can alongside a lot of other industry players out there. And yes, we really hope that the end user also gets educated on the need for that. It's not necessarily a concept which is easy to grasp when you don't understand how an app works, that you need a server, that you need a client, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, we'll do everything which is possible in our power to actually make this move forward and really looking forward to see the progress that you could make into that direction. Wonderful, thank you very much Omondine for joining us here this afternoon. Ian Brown, Independent Researcher. I'd like to hear your closing statement, please. Very briefly, I am excited that this is all happening. I've been writing and researching this topic for over a decade. I think it could make for a much better internet. I think it could address not solve on its own, but be an important part of the solution of a number of the problems that we see online. So it's great we are taking steps. I hope that now the commission has published its proposal that members of the European Parliament, some of whom have already made some really positive statements about taking interoperability just that little bit further, because I don't think we should give up on competition on social media and incident messaging or these other gatekeeper platforms. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Okay, thanks very much Ian. And we'll of course have to see what the developments in the European Parliament end up like. Bearing in mind, there's quite a bit of a battle at the moment over lead committees as well. Iso from Article 19, I'd like to go back to you now for your closing statement. Thank you. Well, I echo what has been said. It's very, very good to have this kind of conversations. My being here as a representative of end users and end users rights, specifically free expression, but also other rights, digital rights. My wish is to see the DMA, the final text of the DMA and the DSA as able to build the digital infrastructure that I think users as well as businesses and society in general deserves for the near future. And I see interoperability as being a key element of it, a key element to empower users, a key element to foster innovation. And I do believe that there are so many, so many use cases that could take a lot of advantage by having, you know, different nuances, different things. I tend, I like the idea that we are the beginning of it, although time is rushing in terms of, you know, also the discussion around those legislative frameworks. And I hope that this conversation, it kind of gives a little bit of contribution to that. Thanks Iso. Interoperability for empowering end users, says Iso Stasi from Article 19 there. Agustin Reiner from Buick, I'd like you to deliver your closing remarks, please. Thank you. I thank you again for this extremely interesting discussion also to my co-panelists. I think that we really have a chance to make things better, make things better for consumers and users, for startups and companies, but even for the gatekeepers, you know, by having proper competition in this market, we can actually increase even their own incentives to continue innovating and trying to bring, you know, even better services for consumers. So I truly believe that this can be a win-win scenario for those that really want to compete on the merits of their own services. However, throughout the legislative process, we need to be all extremely vigilant, the devil is in the detail. And while we might be focusing on Article 6F or wherever we put this, the procedure is going to be crucial here. The enforcement is going to be crucial here. So we really need to pay a lot of attention on the procedures, how this is going to be enforced, I think, and you mentioned it, I think that having the commission enforcement, this is great. We don't want to end up in a GDPR-like scenario. And on top of that, it makes sense. You know, the commission should have the resources, sorry, not those forces forcing here, but proper resources to enforce this. Sorry. So just to keep it short, we need to keep a close eye on how the regulations going to be enforced in practice by the commission, the right, the eventual rights of third parties to be able to submit complaints and raise concerns about the function of the regulation in order to ensure that the effectiveness, you know, will be materialized in the short term and we're not going to wait years like in many competition cases. Let's hope so. Thank you very much, Agustin Reiner there. Platforms should compete on the merit of their services. Agustin Reiner says an interoperability could be a segue into doing that. Well, that was a really rigorous and thorough examination of interoperability across the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act there this afternoon. A big thank you to our panelists for taking the time out of their busy schedules to join us and thank you to all of you tuning in remotely for this session and for your contributions and questions. And of course, a thank you to Open Forum Europe for hosting today's panel. I think we have been left with plenty of food for thought with regards to the value of interoperability across the DSA and the DMA as part of the ongoing negotiations in the Parliament and Council. But that's all from us this afternoon. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you again next time.